


He Loves Like This

by TheMewsAtTen



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Angst and Fluff and Smut, Explicit Language, Explicit Sexual Content, HP: EWE, Hogwarts Eighth Year, M/M, POV First Person
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-01
Updated: 2018-02-16
Packaged: 2019-02-26 09:41:36
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 13,824
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13233078
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheMewsAtTen/pseuds/TheMewsAtTen
Summary: This is my first attempt at Drarry so I'm sorry it's a bit ropey. I've wanted to try writing them for a while so thought I'd give it a go as it's a new year and all!It's a Hogwarts Eighth Year dormitory sharing fic which I know isn't the most original premise but I hope you enjoy the writing nonetheless! It's built around four 'snapshots' of their year together, one for each of the four seasons.Obviously I don't claim to own Harry Potter or the characters in it, no copyright infringement is intended and no money being made.





	1. Prologue

I can think about it with a smile now. The way it took me such a long time to admit that he and I were connected, that we were indivisible, our lives braided together in some way that will probably always be a little bit hard to explain. Even now I find myself struggling to touch it with something as unwieldy as words.

Being the living, breathing Horcrux of a murderer for most of my life had left me with more than that one visible, famous scar on my forehead. It made me terrified of being tethered to someone else - to _anyone_ else.

Looking back, I can see that when the war ended, I was desperate to believe that I was complete as I was. I didn’t _want_ to be part of someone else. I didn’t want anyone else to be part of me. In fact, I had never felt anything like that fierce need to be alone that I felt in those first months afterwards. 

But there he still was, always in the periphery of my life, catching my eye, like an aura.

Draco Malfoy.

I could never, _would_ never have admitted back then, that his pull on me was irresistible, and that it had been that way since we had met. I wouldn’t admit it to others. I wouldn’t even admit it to myself. I didn’t want to accept, now that it seemed we could all rest, could finally _exhale_ after those years of tension, of guarding our own and each other's backs, that what should have faded away along with the constant danger and threat was still there. Our salvation hadn’t weakened the power of what thrummed between the two of us at all. 

I’d _felt_ him since we had met that first year of school, from the moment I’d refused his friendship. It had been like a current running between us all these years. I’d thought it was just hate. Maybe, some of the time, it had been. Either way, I assumed it would go away after we won, after the victory cheer went up and school years filled with keeping him close to keep him in check were no longer necessary. It was a compulsion that was meant to go away when we all got our happy ending.

Loads of people - _most_ people, probably - assumed I still just straight out hated the guy, that we hated each other, the way they’d all decided we always had. But, for me, that wasn’t it. Not all of it. It would have been so much simpler if it had been. But it wasn’t.

It was worse. He confused me. He _obsessed_ me, even now. 

The way I’d known in the marrow of my bones that I had to save him during the battle confused me. The way he had changed, and the way that change had been so obvious during the months of trials that followed. The way I just _knew_ that that change wasn’t a performance to keep himself safe. Most of all, the way he seemed so utterly hollowed out, so . . . defeated. I knew, I’d _seen_ , that there was no fight left in him. And that made me so angry at the world I’d fought so hard for. The world I’d _died_ for, for Merlin’s sake. He was someone I wanted to protect but I didn’t know exactly _why_. Hating him? It would have been so much easier. I _wanted_ to hate him. I _wished_ that was what it was.

I wanted him out of my life. I wanted him to get his fight back, his strength, and I wanted him back in my life and out of my life all at once. He confused me and made me _feel_ when I didn’t want to feel. I was so _sure_ I wanted him out of my life.

That summer went on in a blur of trials and punishments and rebuilding and mourning. At the end of it Professor McGonagall approached me, a few weeks before the start of the new school year. Her trademark firmness was tempered by more than the usual amount of kindness, and it was clear she had something to say to me she thought I wasn’t going to like.

There had been a ‘suggestion’ from the powers that be about promoting inter-house unity at wizarding schools for the sake of lasting peace. This coupled with the pressures of accommodating even a small returning ‘eighth year’ to Hogwarts along with all the other students when large parts of it were still rubble meant that, assuming I planned to return to complete school (and she very much hoped I _did_ intend to do so)I’d have to spend the year sharing a dormitory with _him._

Just him _._

Itwas very nearly enough to convince me that going back was far more hassle than it was worth. I’d been in a war. I’d literally died. I could really have done without facing all of this for a whole year, especially if it was in any way optional. But, after everything, I wanted to be able to choose my path from this point on. I still didn’t really know what I pictured myself doing for the rest of my life, but I knew that cashing in on being The Boy Who Lived because all the other doors were closed to me wasn’t it. Just one more year, and those doors could be propped open while I finally _chose_ my own future.

We all knew there was more to the sadistic dormitory arrangements than unity. The convenient monitoring of Slytherin activities seemed a far more believable objective. Everyone agreed that making Harry Potter share with the Malfoy heir (whose mischief he had openly spent the last seven years foiling), while Ron Weasley got Blaise Zabini and Hermione Granger was lumbered with Pansy Parkinson was hardly a subtle way of keeping prominent Slytherin returnees under watch.

I was determined it was a game I wouldn’t play. I could happily have hexed whoever thought it was OK to ask us to help a sinister retaliation against Slytherins along when we’d all spent our childhoods fighting the very worst kind of vile prejudice. I’d share with him if I had to, but if they wanted me to fight him for their empty revenge, they were going to be disappointed.

Even more disappointing to those seeking payback was the fact that most of the Slytherins were quite willing to keep their heads down, to tolerate the rumours and suspicions against them - justified or not - in exchange for their freedom. For a peaceful life.

I like to think that if I’d been less exhausted by then I would have fought the peculiar living arrangements tooth and nail. But, whatever excuses I make for myself, I didn’t. Perhaps it was because, deep down, the idea of sharing with him didn’t bother me as much as everyone thought it would.

We eventually arrived at Hogwarts and term began. As the news spread that Potter and Malfoy has been forced to share for the year, we could feel the buzzing anticipation of the hexes and fights that were surely going to happen any day now. They never came. Just as we had been since the day of that last battle, and through the trials, we were courteous to one another, publicly and privately. Curt, at least at first. But courteous.

The feeling of depriving people of their fix of drama was exhilarating. 

He was a quiet room-mate. Clean and tidy, after years of sharing with the likes of Ron and Dean and Seamus he was a very literal breath of fresh air. I made more of an effort to be tidy and quiet myself when I noticed that about him, and within a few weeks of the start of term, conversation was easier. Not flowing, exactly. But easier. 

 _I can live like this_ , I had thought after a while. _This doesn’t hurt the way I thought it would._

It was a cold, clear night in the middle of November when he came back to the dormitory - _our_ dormitory - and found me slumped against the wall, sipping firewhisky neat from the bottle.

I’ll always remember that night as the night that I started waking up; the night that I started _feeling_ again. It was the night that it occurred to me that I really _hadn’t died -_ that I’d _survived -_ and that now my battle was to find a way of being amongst the living . . .


	2. Autumn

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> There are brief mentions of a suicide attempt and mental health issues, childhood abuse and alcohol use in this chapter - just a heads-up so you can enjoy with self-care and avoid any triggers!

He froze briefly as he breezed into the dormitory, giving me a cursory glance before striding to his desk and sitting at it heavily, his back to me. 

“Drinking alone, Potter?” he drawled without looking around. “Slippery slope.”

His voice was still all cut glass, his tones clipped and vaguely sarcastic, just like they had been when he was a boy. But the comment was sort of flat, the old venom drained from every word. It was the voice of a man. A tired man.

I looked up blearily from my position on the floor, my back pressed to the wall next to my bed, the half-empty bottle of firewhisky dangling between my knees. “Have you been taking lessons from Hermione on how to be a sanctimonious pain in my arse, Malfoy?”

“I think we both know I’m a natural,” he returned offhandedly, still not turning to face me.

“True. You’re out of practice lately, mind you,” I grunted drily. I could feel the false confidence that came with being nicely tipsy driving me to provoke him, to tease out his customary defensiveness and arrogance.

But it was met with silence. Malfoy did that now. He did silence where once there were waspish retorts. It set my bloody teeth on edge.

“You know, you’re the only person I know who doesn’t seem to talk all the time these days, Malfoy,” I sighed, hitting the back of my head against the wall behind me a little too hard, trying and failing to take the edge off the frustration.

“Really? That’s interesting - must be something that happens to you when you save the world’s arse. I don’t get much conversation these days, myself,” he answered in a monotone. 

He _still_ hadn’t turned around. From where I sat it looked like he might have been reading something, but his shoulders were tensed in a way that told me that, whatever it was, it didn’t have his full attention.

“I think everyone is afraid of silence.” I took another sloppy swig from the bottle. “I think they feel like they need to fill silence in case we all start . . . thinking about things.”

He snorted an almost imperceptible laugh.

“What?!” I asked, sharply.

“For a man who’s so in favour of silence you’re making a lot of noise, Potter.”

“Sorry.”

He turned slowly in his chair. Even the dulling effect of the firewhisky couldn’t blunt my surprise when, suddenly, he came to sit alongside me on the floor.

“Don’t be,” he groaned as he sat. “Like I said, there’s not exactly a queue around the grounds of people hoping for a conversation with a disgraced former death eater. So . . . what’s the occasion?” he asked as I passed the bottle to him. I stared openly, watching his throat bobbing as he drank, paying far more attention to the elegance of his neck and his alabaster skin than was strictly necessary. _Too much firewhisky,_ I told myself. _Much too much_.

“Nothing. Takes the edge off. I don’t make a habit of it,” I muttered, more defensively than I’d intended to.

He passed the bottle back, rested his head against the wall and smiled. 

“What?” I tried not to smile back at him the way it made me want to.

“Nothing. Really, nothing. Difficult day.”

Somehow I knew not to force it. Not right now. But it was a good time to spit out something I’d been wanting to for a while. I downed another mouthful to steady my nerves.

“Look, I should have said sooner but thanks, for making this dorm sharing thing so easy. It’s been . . . “

“Yes, I know,” he interrupted. “It hasn’t been the _total ordeal_  I’d been expecting, either.”

“Um, thanks?”

“Come on, Potter. Don’t pretend you hadn’t been expecting the same. Needless to say I wasn’t over the moon about it myself when I heard. If it weren’t for my mother I don’t think I would have come back at all. So, yes, thank you too, I suppose.”

I passed the bottle back. “Your mother?”

He looked at me, eyes narrowed, head slightly cocked, as if weighing up whether telling me what he was about to say was worth the risk.

“I know that she doesn’t exactly inspire sympathy in the rest of the world, Potter, but she’s suffered a great deal. Far more than anyone outside our family ever realised. And she’s, well, _different_ since father . . . since father isn’t there anymore. She’s frail . . .”

He drank, more greedily this time, but still managing to be graceful and tidy. None of my mess or clumsiness. I pretended not to notice that his hands shook as he lifted the bottle to his lips. 

“Malfoy, I don’t know if this helps. I don’t even know if it’s something you especially want to hear from me. But I haven’t forgotten that she helped me. To get away from . . . to defeat him. And I _won’t_ forget.”

“You know why she did it?” he asked thickly.

“Because she wanted to get to you. To know you were safe.”

He nodded. “I came back here this year because it was what she wanted. Anyway my life isn’t exactly full of options and opportunities right now, and oddly this school feels more like home than anywhere else, even if I don’t deserve that feeling after what I’ve done. There’s so little left that I can give her, but I think that knowing I’m planning for some kind of a future is helping her . . . giving her something to . . . she tried to kill herself a few months ago. Merlin, I can’t believe I’m telling _you_ this, of all people, I blame _this_ stuff,” he raised his eyebrows at the bottle as he passed it back to me once again. 

“I’m sorry.” My stomach lurched and my heart ached with a feeling I couldn’t name.

“We managed to keep it quiet. She wouldn’t want it known. I know there are plenty of people who think she deserves to be dead.”

“Well they’re fucking wrong, Malfoy.” I said it louder than I had meant to. 

He stared at me for a little longer than felt comfortable before shrugging his shoulders. “Yeah, they are. We made bad choices, me and her. _Really_ bad choices. But she’s not a bad person. I’ve never doubted that she loved me. She never let me doubt it for a minute . . .”

“Everyone makes bad choices at some point, don’t they?”

“I think ours were fairly off the scale, Potter,” he smiled grimly. “Besides, I can’t think of a single bad choice _you’ve_ ever made.”

I snorted dismissively. “Then you don’t have much of a memory. Look, you fucked up. Both of you. But, well, you didn’t have the support I did, did you? Making the right decisions has to be easier when you’re constantly surrounded by people supporting you to make them.”

He looked stern all of a sudden; a flash of the guardedness that I’d learned to associate with him over the years. “Why are you listening to all this, Potter? Ammunition for the next time I fuck up? Enjoying the thought of me taken down a peg or two?”

“Fuck, I’m too tired for this, Malfoy. Look, I don’t believe you’re going to fuck up again. And quite why you think knowing that bastard nearly robbed you of everything good would make me feel better when it’s exactly the same thing he did to me, I’ve no idea. But it _doesn’t_ make me happy.”

He took the bottle from me and drank deeply again. “He nearly took everything from me. But the worst thing was feeling like I had no _choice_. I don’t expect people to understand it, or forgive it, but it’s true.”

“I know.”

“I wasn’t even all that afraid of dying, in the end. Then you . . . then he was gone, and I started hoping. Then started feeling like I didn’t _deserve_ hope. Merlin, listen to me. I _swear_ to you Potter, if you breath a word of this to anyone I’ll . . .”

“You’ll what?”

Incandescent rage lit up his pale, angular face, making it look bright and alive. I smiled.

“You know, Malfoy, I sometimes wonder what my life would have been like if I hadn’t found out I was a wizard when I did. I’m sure you’ve heard rumours about the life I had, the people I was with before I came here. Then this was it and I had to fight, fight for this other, better life, after growing up being . . . _abused_ like that. There were loads of times I wanted to scream, to ask why it was that I hadn’t been through enough already and that now I had to fight another monster. I feel like I’ve been fighting monsters all my life. So I’ll swap you a secret for yours. I still cast silencing charms at night when I draw the curtains because I sometimes have nightmares. Not just of fighting the dead and reaching out for the ones I’ve lost but others, from before all of that, because you never quite get over not feeling loved as a child. So I understand you caring for your mother, wanting to take care of her. I get it and, for what it’s worth, I admire it. How’s that for a trade? I admire _you_. So if I betray your trust at least you get to go out there armed with that. It’s got to be better than nothing, eh?” I slurred, banging my head against the wall again.

“You’re drunk, Potter,” he said incredulously.

“You’re not sober yourself, Malfoy.”

“True.”

Something seemed to happen that night, like a seal had been broken, an invisible line crossed. I began to look forward to the evenings, to our conversations. While they wouldn’t all end up being fuelled by firewhisky, they were all honesty and none of the well-meant patronising commiseration I had to endure outside our room. None of the suspicion and hostility that faced him. 

I didn’t notice us becoming friends.


	3. Winter

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Moderate smut and violence in this chapter!

The castle was beginning to turn festive around me. Excitable students were preparing to clear out for Christmas, and even the professors were starting to seem pretty relaxed, at least by their usual standards. 

Most of eighth year would be staying for Christmas. 

Of course the castle was safe; McGonagall had made sure of that before she was willing to allow a single student back for the new school year. But large parts of it were still little more than a ruin. Hermione and Luna had been the ones to suggest that we stay and spend Christmas cleaning up together and, to give them their due, it definitely looked like a better plan for unity than anything the Ministry had managed to dream up so far. Fewer students around over Christmas would give us the space we needed to work at it properly, and we’d more or less have the run of the castle during the holidays, so they’d managed to convince everyone that it would be as much fun as it was work. 

‘Accidentally’ letting slip about Seamus and Dean’s massive secret stash of firewhisky probably didn’t hurt.

It wouldn’t make for the peaceful, quiet Christmas I’d been hoping for at the start of term, but lately I found that didn’t bother me so much anymore. It was a castle, for crying out loud; there was always _somewhere_ I could disappear to if I needed to. Still, I couldn’t deny that I was looking forward to most of the younger years being gone. They hung around, asked questions, and first years asking for autographs and even sending love potions to the dormitory wasn’t unheard of - much to Malfoy’s amusement. A couple of weeks without that kind of thing would definitely make the air easier to breathe. 

I did worry we’d be upsetting Molly by not descending on the Burrow as one big group like she’d originally wanted. But she’d have Bill and Fleur, Charlie, Percy, George and a whole gaggle of other Christmas guests, so we wouldn’t be leaving her nest empty, and she’d assured us that she would be OK; that it was important work we were doing and that she was proud of us all for doing it. Besides, after splitting up with Ginny during the summer, I wasn’t sure I could have faced a full Weasley Christmas. Not yet, anyway. It wasn’t that it had been a horrible breakup - Ginny had completely agreed that it wasn’t working and we were always going to be brilliant friends. But she was still their daughter and little sister, and it still felt a bit raw for a show of happy extended families. It would all settle in time but, for now, staying behind felt right.

And Malfoy would be staying. 

Knowing he would still be here, sharing this room and his thoughts and his silences with me at night, made me glad. I couldn’t say when the idea of being away from him for weeks had become wrenching and sore, but somehow it had. He meant coming home at the end of the day to me now, and even though Ron and Hermione and the rest of the gang would still be here, I knew I would _feel_ him missing if he left for too long. I was sure he would worry for Narcissa - she had urged him to stay, assuring him that she would not be alone and that it would look far worse on them both if he returned home than it would if he stayed. Besides, he _wanted_ to be part of the rebuilding. And when it came down to it, I was selfish. I wanted him with _me_ , so I was relieved that he would be.

I was sitting on my bed poring over Quidditch Through the Ages when he came through the door that night, and even without looking up I knew that something bad had happened. 

It’s his energy. It’s just . . . like that.

I looked up. His face was bloodied, his shirt torn, and when he moved further into the room I could see he was definitely limping.

My own blood roared in my ears, my voice a cold calm. “Who did that to you?”

He winced as he sat on his bed. “Leave it will you?” he groaned, “he’s only done what the rest of them have wanted to for months.”

“Who?” I pressed, pacing over to sit down next to him, trying to take stock of where, and how badly, he was hurt.

“Fuck’s sake, just some jumped-up fourth year. It doesn’t matter.”

“Yeah, it _does_ matter, actually. We need to tell McGonagall about this.”

“Are you _really_ this thick, Potter, or are you making a special effort just for me?” he ground out through gritted teeth, summoning a small mirror and casting cleaning charms to clear some of the blood on his face so he could assess the damage beneath. On closer inspection it looked like most of it was actually just coming from a broken nose, making it look a lot worse than it really was. “Draco Malfoy goes whining to McGonagall that some fourth year thug has given him a going over. Fourth year thug gets pulled into her office and punished. Tell me, exactly how do you see this one playing out?”

He had a point, but I wasn’t going to admit it. “Whatever. These fucking kids who know nothing about any of it can’t just go around meting out punishment wherever they feel like it, Malfoy.”

“Yeah?” he asked me shrilly, his hands open, gesturing to the mess he was in, “I seem to have a load of cuts and bruises and a shirt in shreds that beg to differ.”

I wanted to hold him. I had to ball my hands into fists to keep from reaching out to cup his face in my hands. “What can I do?” I asked weakly instead.

“I don’t need you to do anything, Potter,” he said, looking at his own hands and wringing them nervously as we sat in silence for a while.  “I can’t go to Pomfrey,” he suddenly declared. “She’ll go straight to McGonagall. I’ve got Dittany and a potion I’ve made in the drawer but . . . well . . . I’m probably going to need some help reaching my back . . . “ he tailed off, looking sheepish.

“Yeah . . . y-yeah, of course,” I stammered. “I mean, for what it’s worth I still think you should see Pomfrey. Did the little prick hit your head? You’ll need to be careful if you’ve got concussion.”

“In my defence, he’s quite a _big_ prick, Potter. And no. I don’t think so.”

I palmed my wand quickly from my pocket, knowing from experience that Episkey was a charm better done without too much warning, especially on broken noses. I cast it before he could tense up and his nose straightened into its usual perfection, albeit with a sickening crunch.

“Fuck’s sake!,” he shouted, his hand going gingerly to his face. “I fucking _hate_ you, Potter.”

I chuckled in spite of myself. “Fine, whatever makes you feel better. I know it hurts like a bastard; someone had to cast it on _me_ in sixth year when some little dick broke _my_ nose on the Hogwarts Express . . .” I said pointedly.

I saw his face cloud over and his eyes widen and felt instant regret like a lump in my throat. 

“Sorry, that was a low blow,” I sighed. It was me who had made his eyes look vulnerable like that. I could see I’d hurt him in a way the beating he’d taken hadn’t come close. 

He leaned across me to open a case in the drawer next to his bed, scooping out the Dittany and another small vial of some sort of thick white potion before handing them both to me.

“If it makes you feel any better I will now feel even _more_ physically sick when I think about that incident than I did before,” he said sullenly.

“It doesn’t. Make me feel any better, that is. I’ll . . . I’ll need you to take your shirt off.”

“Oh, yeah.” He fumbled with his buttons before accepting that the shirt was a lost cause and ripping it open, the buttons flying everywhere, yanking it off and throwing it to the foot of the bed dismissively.

My heart stopped for a moment, my cock twitching at the sight, my breath catching as I allowed myself to glance down at his exposed skin. He covered the Dark Mark on his arm with his hand self-consciously. I wanted to tell him it no longer mattered to me, that it was a scar from a war we’d all fought in and we’d won and that who he was right now was what mattered to me. But the words just wouldn’t come.

The scars from the Sectumsempra weren’t a surprise to me by now. We’d been sharing a dormitory for months, after all. But now I was seeing them up close, shiny and persistent and undeniable amongst the new bruises that were already starting to bloom in purples and yellows and greens on his delicate pale chest. It hit me with a feeling of terrible guilt, swooping behind my ribs. I nearly reached out to run my fingers over them - over him. I forced my gaze back up to his eyes. 

He held my stare before shifting a little, showing his back to me. 

“The white potion just reduces inflammation and redness. I’m guessing you _know_ what the Dittany does?“

“Yep. I’m familiar with it,” I said darkly.

I began to smooth the white potion over an angry-looking welt on his shoulder blade, both of us sitting in silence as I touched him with all the care I felt for him; the care that felt like it was smothering me all of a sudden.

“You didn’t know,” he muttered eventually, so low it was almost a whisper.

“Hmm?”

“If you’d known what that spell did . . . I mean . . . I know, I knew then too, you’d never have used it in the bathroom that day if you’d known what would happen. You didn’t _know_. It wasn’t your fault.” 

He hissed and tensed up suddenly as I touched the potion to his other shoulder.

“Shit, sorry,” I winced, pulling back.

“No, don’t worry, it’s fine,” he said, his voice deep; a growl. “Keep going.”

There it was again, that throbbing in my cock, betraying everything I was trying so hard to keep hidden. I went back to applying the potion, determined to distract myself.

“You once said you couldn’t think of a single bad choice I’d made. _That_ was a bad choice. Using that spell. It could have killed you. It was one of the worst choices I’ve ever made,” I blurted out. “Tell me what happened tonight, please. I’m not going to keep going on at you to tell McGonagall. I just want to know. I . . . I need to know.”

His shoulders slumped and he exhaled deeply. “Ernie Wright - one of your lot, Gryffindor fourth year. He got the jump on me in the corridor. Just gave me a bit of a kicking. Wasn’t all that thorough about it, really. I’ll live, Potter.”

I wanted to choke Wright with my bare hands. No magic. Just my body and my anger. “You’re quicker on your feet than that oaf, so I’m assuming you didn’t try that hard to fight back . . .”

He let out a bitter laugh. “No point, is there? I hurt him, it means I’m in seven shades of shit with McGonagall, the Ministry, the Wizengamot, the lot of them. Easier to just let him take out his frustrations. He’s a clumsy fucking lump so it didn’t take him long to knacker himself out.”

I dabbed again at the cut that ran across his shoulder blade, deliberately gently this time, encouraged when he didn’t flinch like he had before. I tried not to think about the softness of his skin, the way it reflected the light, the way his muscles seemed to respond to my touch . . .

“Turn around,” I instructed when I was satisfied that his back was healing nicely between drops of the Dittany and layers of the potion. He turned to face me and I dipped my thumb into the potion again, looking to him for permission before running it lightly over a small cut just above his nipple. I felt him shudder and sigh and looked up to find him looking straight back at me, his gaze intense, biting down on his lower lip. I flattened my palm so it rested on his chest, over the beating of his heart.

“How . . .” I hesitated, “how is it that you’ve taken a right going over and you’re _still_ . . .”

“Still what?” he asked, not looking away.

“Still beautiful,” I breathed. “You’re still so . . .”

My brain shorted as he pressed his lips to mine in a rough, searing, open-mouthed kiss, all teeth and tongue and desperation, before breaking away as suddenly as he’d done it.

“Merlin, sorry, I shouldn’t have done that,” he panted, blushing furiously.

“Yes, yes you should,” I purred as I grabbed his cheek and pulled him in again, mirroring all of his heat and want, trying not to hurt him while at the same time feeling like I couldn’t possibly get him close enough to me. “Do you want me . . .  to stop?” I ground out between kisses.

“Don’t you dare, Potter,” he hissed, pushing me to lay on my back and straddling my hips, removing my glasses and gently placing them on his bedside table before running his thumb over my bottom lip. “I’ve wanted to do this for months. I thought you’d hex me if I even tried to . . .”

I dragged my teeth across his throat, stopping to nip at his earlobe. “Shut up, Malfoy,” I growled impatiently into his ear.

He pulled up my t-shirt and I threw it aside, my cock hardening almost painfully. I looked up to see him staring down at me, biting his lip again as he began grinding his own unmistakeable hardness against mine.

“I’m . . . scared I’ll hurt you,” I whimpered as he grazed a hand down my stomach, deftly popping the button and unzipping my fly, shifting to lay between my thighs.

“Hurt me. I don’t care. I have to feel you. _Please_.” That was all it took. Draco Malfoy begging me to touch him the way I’d been fantasising about since that night I had watched his long, elegant neck as he slugged firewhisky from the bottle on the floor of this very room.

“Sweet Mer-, oh, _wow_ . . .” I heard myself whine as he curled his perfect long fingers around my cock, jerking it with a confident grip, twisting his wrist and swiping over the head as if he already knew exactly what it was I needed. I let my fingertips trace the lines of the muscles of his back as they shifted, gripping his hips, trying to lay my hands on every inch of him I could reach, unwilling to miss out on any part of him.

“Good?” he asked with a smile.

“Perfect,” I groaned out, squeezing my eyes shut against the waves of indescribable pleasure flooding my body. “Well, nearly perfect . . .” I added as I unzipped his fly and released the erection that had been pressing against the fabric of his pants.

“Fuck, Potter, what are you doing to me? I’m going insane,” he gasped, swallowing my moans in another wet and needy kiss as I felt the smooth weight of his cock resting in my hand. 

“Want you. So much,” I groaned into the soft, spicy-smelling flesh of his neck as I held our cocks together with my hand, using the other to pull his trousers down far enough that I could finally, _finally_ knead at the strong curves of his arse.

I looked into his eyes as he thrust into my grip. At that point it might have been simpler if I’d seen in him just the lust of an 18 year-old; the need to get off. But his eyes were shining and thoughtful and unfathomable and I found that I couldn’t look away, even as his pace built and I came embarrassingly quickly with a shout beneath him. He followed seconds later, letting out a choked grunt as he added his come to mine, coating my hand and stomach. 

He collapsed onto me, stroking my cheek gently and nuzzling my neck and I thought, for a moment, that I heard him say my name. Just my name. _Harry_. 

When we eventually came back to ourselves, he kicked off his trousers and I cast a cleaning charm on both of us, shucking my jeans before conjuring a blanket big enough to cover us both comfortably.

“What the hell are you doing, Potter?” he sighed in a way that sounded almost fond as I tangled our bodies together snuggly. 

“I’m staying here with you. To make sure you’re OK. We’re still not absolutely sure you’re not concussed and people thinking I murdered you during the night won’t be great for my precious reputation.”

“Because you couldn’t _possibly_ keep an eye on me from over there?” he tilted his chin towards my bed across the room. 

The hurt I felt must have shown on my face. His own expression softened and he pulled me to him. “I think I can be persuaded to let you stay here,” he yawned, kissing my forehead and tracing the line of my cheekbone with his thumb. “And anyway, you and I both know the whole wizarding world would fall in love with you all over again if you finally put an end to me.”

Anger and sadness and fear spiked at me all at once. “I wish you wouldn’t say things like that,” I snapped.

“Yeah? Why?”

“Because they’re not true. And even if they were, it wouldn’t mean that’s how _I_ feel. You don’t give me much credit, do you?”

“Sorry. Thanks for . . . for helping me. Jokes aside I think you _know_ going to Pomfrey wasn’t really an option. Not if my existence here is going to continue to be bearable. Besides, I think I like your bedside manner better . . .”

“I should bloody well hope so!” I grinned, trailing a finger down his arm. “I don’t like it, lying to McGonagall. And I don’t like that keeping it quiet means the likes of Wright get away with making their own rules. We didn’t go through everything we went through for that. But if I can help make your life better . . .” I said with a smile, reaching up to brush a tear away from under his eye. I wasn’t sure if he even knew it had fallen.

“You do. Help. You help. A lot.”

“Great. Cool.” I could feel myself beaming at him. 

“Do you . . . do you still cast silencing charms so I won’t wake up if you have nightmares?” he asked, staring at the ceiling.

“Yeah. Yeah I do.”

“Stop.”

“What?”

“I don’t want you to hide them from me. I want to help you like you’ve helped me. Stop . . . I want you to stop hiding them from me.”

“OK. I think I can do that."

His eyes fell closed after a while and I lay there for what must have been hours, watching his eyelids flutter in dreams, every rise and fall of his chest reassuring me that he was fine. That he’d _be_ fine, in time. It probably should have bothered me that we hadn’t talked about what had just happened between us, or that I somehow suspected we wouldn’t in the morning, either. 

If this was going to be the only time I ever held him like this, I was going to commit every moment and every feeling to precious memory.


	4. Spring

I was right. We didn’t talk about it in the morning.

We woke tangled up in one another, and he pressed an easy kiss to the side of my head before getting up slowly, groaning as he timidly moved his limbs to loosen some of the stiffness of sleep.

“How are you feeling?” I asked groggily as I sat up.

“Better than I was.” He grimaced a little as he put his weight on his tender ankle. “I imagine it’ll ache for a few days. But it’s nothing I can’t handle.”

He was trying to make it sound like it was no big deal again. I didn’t like that he felt he had to do that in front of me, especially after . . . well, after whatever _that_ was last night. 

“Your eye is still pretty bruised,” I frowned. “You’ll need to be smart about it if you’re serious about keeping it from McGonagall . . .”

“It’ll be fine, there are charms, potions. If the worst happens and she spots it I’ll tell her I came off my broom.”

“Draco Malfoy came off his broom, eh? That lie’s going to taste bitter coming out of your mouth,” I teased.

“If it keeps her off my case . . .” he shrugged sullenly.

We left the dormitory separately, as we always did. I tried not to stare at him when I saw him in all the usual places that day. At breakfast in the Great Hall, then in classes, in the library during free periods and in the eighth year common room in the evening, I tried to concentrate on anything but him, struggling to force my eyes to rest somewhere, _anywhere_ else. I wondered what was going on between us, whether he wanted what I wanted, how I could possibly know, how I could find out without scaring him away. I kept replaying it, going over what had happened, _how_ it had happened, too wonderfully stunned that it had happened at all to even think about it clearly. The rest of the world suddenly irritated me, like it was in the way of what I needed. I didn’t want to go through the motions of eating, or potions, or revision. I just wanted _him_.

Even when he came back to the dormitory that night, removing his shirt, locking his gaze with mine as he walked lazily over to where I was laying on my bed and stroked my cheek, pressing a kiss to my lips, and asked “is this . . . OK?”, we _still_ didn’t talk about any of it. I just nodded, holding him to me wordlessly, as tight as I could, biting on my lip to keep from crying with the relief of having him close to me again.

He stood me up and undressed me carefully, not as feverishly as last night. When I sat back down on the edge of my bed he straddled me and I pressed my lips to the naked planes of his flat stomach and chest, my hands gripping at the muscles of his back, feeling like I could breathe him into myself if I tried hard enough. I kissed his skin and he cradled my head in his hands and I wished that I could send him my energy, all my magic and power until he had everything he needed to be fine and happy. I flipped him onto the bed and licked and stroked and sucked at him until he came in my mouth, his body wracked with spasms, his fingers tugging at my hair. My own orgasm surprised me, coming after only a few strokes of his fist over my hardness. And later, when we’d recovered, that night was the first night I opened myself completely to another person; the first night he pressed his perfect cock into my body, asking if it was OK, if _I_ was OK, stopping again and again to kiss me, to run his hands over me and pull me close to him. Icy, aloof Draco Malfoy. He came inside me with a shout as I coated my skin and his with my own release, and I knew in that moment that nothing would ever feel quite the same again.

\- - - - - - -

Over the next few weeks we spent most nights curled up together, either in his bed or in mine. We spent the days not talking about it or acknowledging it. It just _was_ and then, during the day, it _wasn’t_. A double life. 

Hermione and Luna’s idea of course turned out to be a good one - everyone else _did_ get along better with all the Slytherins while we were working towards a common goal over Christmas, and by springtime the last tensions between us all seemed to have dissolved into something more like grudging banter. 

But, now _months_ after that first night together, he was still distant with me in front of everyone else. Not hostile. Friendly, even, when the situation called for it. But distant. I was sure no-one could ever possibly know that most nights when we disappeared behind our shared door we also shared the same bed, falling asleep exhausted by sex, melting into the feeling of each other’s bodies. I knew I should probably feel excited by it, by the secrecy of it all, the fact that it was just _ours_. When it began, at first, perhaps I was, a little. But as the weeks passed I wanted to tell people he was mine, as if telling them he was mine would make it the truth. My days became an exercise in maddening longing. 

Spring had crept up on us, the days starting to get longer and less bitingly cold, and talk inevitably turned to Hogsmeade, with everyone agreeing that a trip to the Broomsticks for a butterbeer or several was long overdue.

Well, almost everyone.

One Saturday morning at the beginning of March, I woke to him tracing circles with his fingertips on my chest. I had always _liked_ Saturdays, the chance to lay in my big, warm four-poster till noon if I wanted to. I still remembered how it felt to sleep hungry in a cupboard and I knew I’d always love a huge comfortable bed, the chance to be lazy, opportunities to eat even when I was already feeling full. 

But now, I _lived_ for these weekend mornings, when we could prolong the part of our day when we were together, naked and sated. As I lay there, my eyes still closed, the realisation that this _thing_ between us, whatever it was, had been going on for nearly three months hit me like a bludger.

Every time I had come close to trying to talk to him about it, to ask him what it was, what we were calling it, it seemed like he had somewhere he needed to be, or we were interrupted - or I just lost my nerve. In the end it had started to feel like the unbroken surface of water, and in my desperation to make it last and keep it from breaking apart I had even begun to wonder whether it wasn’t best just to let it be there, to let it be calm and undisturbed, to try not to think about what was going on beneath.

Feeling his touch on my body, it came to me. 

I nuzzled into him and he put up no resistance when I burrowed into his arms, turning my face upwards to kiss his jawline. 

“Will you do something for me? A favour?” I whispered.

“I woke you . . .” he said, his tone something between self-reproach and apology.

“You woke me,” I agreed.

“Sorry.”

“I like it when you wake me.”

He smiled at that. “You said something about a favour?” he asked, slumping onto his back as I raised myself up on my elbow to look down at him. 

“Hmm, yeah. Come to Hogsmeade with us all this weekend.”

He huffed incredulously. “That’s not a favour. You already know I’m going. Not as if I can get out of it, really . . .”

“Yeah. You’re going with Blaise and Pansy. I think the three of you should come with the rest of us. We’ve all been hanging around together for months anyway. It would make sense. You . . . you’re different in front of the others, you know.” I said, hating how sulky and petulant I sounded all of a sudden.

He rolled his eyes. “Um, yes. Of course I am. I’m not about to suck you off in front of the rest of eighth year, Potter.”

“I’m not bloody asking you to, am I?!” He was avoiding the subject, and he knew I knew it. “You don’t have to ignore me, though.” I threw myself back onto the pillows with a sigh.

He closed his teeth gently around my earlobe. “Do you ever consider what might happen if people start seeing us together too often? It’ll do you no favours to be seen with me. It’s bad enough for some people here that you’re so reluctant to make my life a living hell, much less that, well, if they _knew_. . . “

“You really think I care about any of that? Please. Please come with us. Blaise and Pansy, Ron, Hermione, Luna, me, everyone - we’ll all be there, nothing odd about any of it. Whatever it is that’s bothering you, it’ll be OK. It’s just the pub for a couple of butterbeers. Nothing to it.”

He rolled his eyes again. I liked it when he did that. It usually meant I was winning; breaking down his defences. “Fine. The way things are now it was probably inevitable that Blaise and Pansy would want to tag along with the rest of your lot anyway.”

“Thank you,” I said, smiling giddily despite his attempt to sound sour.

“But I’m not drinking butterbeer. It’s horrific.”

“That’s fine. It’s not about the butterbeer. The butterbeer is optional.”

He held my head to his chest and we lay there together in silence, him running his fingers through my hair.

“You don’t get nightmares so much anymore . . .” he sighed after a while.

“No. I sleep well, since we . . .” I struggled to find the right words.

“Good,” he interrupted before I had to, kissing me softly. “That’s good.”

\- - - - - - - 

When the day of the visit to Hogsmeade came, we all left the castle together as planned. Despite his reservations he had found a place in our group almost by accident; a place that meant he could be quiet if he needed to be without it drawing too much attention. I didn’t need him to talk to me; his silences were completely natural to me by now. But I did feel drawn to stand near him, to walk with him, to feel the slight heat from his body, to know he was there, next to me in the world. It all felt a lot like contentment. 

We all sat comfortably together in the pub. He sat beside me, pressed flush against me. As the firewhisky I was drinking took the edge off my inhibitions, I felt the urge to slip my hand down beneath the table, to rest it on his knee, to drag it up the inside of his thigh until I could palm at his arousal. Only the thought of how self-conscious it would make him, how horrified I suspected he would be, kept my hand where it was, gripping compulsively at my glass, my flaming cheeks everything to do with the booze and nothing at all to do with my recalling the way he had keened and fisted the sheets as I rode him last night . . .

It was a carefree, joyous afternoon. When we eventually got up to leave, the blast of air on our faces as we crowded out of the doors was sobering and refreshing. 

“Hiding behind Potter and his crew as usual, Malfoy?” The shout came from a tall, stocky boy who was propped languidly against the wall of the Broomsticks, flanked by two thin, gangly acquaintances.

I felt him tense and freeze next to me.

“Draco, just ignore him,” Pansy muttered quietly.

“The fuck’s his problem?” Seamus asked, more loudly. 

“Nothing,” Draco growled. “Just some kid, let’s go.”

The knut dropped, vague recognition dawning on me. Gryffindor fourth year. Overgrown and swaggering. Ernie Wright.

“Some _kid_ who lost relatives because of your lot, Malfoy. Need me to fucking remind you?” Wright shouted back, his face reddening with fury. “Fucking Death Eater scum. Shouldn’t have been allowed back to Hogwarts. Should be rotting in Azkaban with his disgusting father. And that rotten carcass of a mother . . .”

I don’t remember how I reached him, but Wright hadn’t even stopped shouting as I held him by his throat against the wall.

“Listen, you prick. I didn’t go through all of that, _we_ didn’t go through it, so oafs like you can go around deciding that justice is whatever you make it out to be,” I rumbled at him, my teeth bared, my face so close to his we were nearly touching.

“And who gets to decide that, Potter? You? Seems like anything in the world is forgivable if the Saviour says it is. Two uncles dead and a cousin tortured until she went nuts, Potter. I don’t forgive and I haven’t fucking forgotten.” Wright’s eyes were wide and his breathing laboured, but he was standing his ground and I felt a pang of something more than anger when I saw the stubborn sadness in his eyes.

“Stay out of my way, Wright,” I growled as I let go of him and walked away. “And stay out of _his_.”

“Potter may have forgotten what a Death Eater lowlife you are, Malfoy,” he shouted at Draco’s back as he marched off alone in the direction of the castle. “Not all of us have such short memories!”

I made to follow Draco and felt Blaise’s hand grab my arm. “Potter, it might be best to let him blow off some steam,” he urged.

“I think Blaise is right, Harry. Speak to him when we get back,” soothed Hermione, gripping my other arm.

I shrugged them off a little more roughly than I had meant to. “Yeah,” I agreed grudgingly, looking back to see Wright and his sidekicks sloping off in the opposite direction. 

I started off in the direction of the castle after Draco, losing the others when they failed to keep pace with me.

\- - - - - - -

He was sitting on his bed, his head in his hands when I got back to the dormitory. Blaise had offered to come and speak to him but waiting to see him was already making me itch. I said I’d do it myself. 

“Are you alright? You shouldn’t let that wanker get to you.” I said, closing the door behind me.

“No I shouldn’t. I should stand there and take it, just like I did, just like I always do. Even when he started being a prick to you. That’s what I do. I stand there and take it.”

“That’s not what I mean.”

“What _do_ you mean, Potter?” He was shaking. “You just don’t get it, do you? You’ll never have peace from these people if you try to get along with me. This world we live in won’t stand for this, for . . . us. Just stay away from me, OK? If you want to help, stay away from me from now on.”

“I don’t care what the likes of Wright think of me. I know you’re angry. Talk to me.”

“He’s lost people. It’s not his fault. I watched him today, mouthing off to you with his sneering sidekicks and I realised that used to be me. I can’t be redeemed in some people’s eyes. But people questioning your intentions because of me. That can’t be right. I can’t . . . I just can’t deal with that.”

“Why aren’t you listening to me? _I don’t care what he thinks of me._ ”

“ _I_ do. _I_ care what people think of you. And so does everyone else. You’re not helping when you try to save me. Just . . . stay away from me, Potter. Stay away.” He sounded utterly exhausted.

“If that’s what you want,” I said weakly, my head spinning and my stomach turning over with nausea.

“Yes,” he said, laying down on his side on the bed.

“Just . . . Malf-, Draco . . . when you’re ready, if you need . . . you’re not alone. I’m not going anywhere. You’re not alone.”

“That’s just it isn’t it? I am alone. I _have_ to be. That’s the price.”

“No. You paid the price already. It doesn’t have to be this way.”

“I don’t know why I’ve let this get this far. It was stupid. Selfish. Just leave me alone, Potter. Stay out of my way and I’ll stay out of yours.”

He drew his wand, closing the heavy curtains around his bed, and that was the last I heard of him that night.

I lay on my own bed, resting my face on the pillow we had shared that morning, inhaling him and missing him on the other side of the room like he was on the other side of the world. And, that night, the nightmares came back.


	5. Summer

It had been two months. Two months since the last time we’d spoken properly. Two months since the last time I’d fallen asleep in his arms. 

Our dormitory was practically two rooms now. When he had to be there, he kept his curtains closed. He stayed out as late as possible, left early. He’d curled up asleep in the common room more than once rather than returning to his own bed.

He was still there, still around, but in so many ways, he felt gone.

It was the beginning of June, but the Scottish weather was dingy and as sullen as my mood. The rain meant the eighth year common room was inevitably crowded, stinking of bodies and bad tempers and damp robes. I sat in the corner, wallowing in my misery, staring at his back as he sat hunched over a desk reading. Watching him was physically painful, but I couldn’t bear not to do it whenever I got the chance. Besides, I didn’t feel like doing much else, and I reasoned that it was only myself I was hurting.

I felt the other end of the sofa dip as Pansy dropped onto it with a loud huff.

“You love him,” she observed; a statement, not a question. 

My denial died on my lips, and I realised in that moment that whatever it was that had given me the strength to keep the way I felt a secret had deserted me. I would have taken out a full page spread in The Daily Prophet if I thought it would bring him back to me.

“Makes no difference,” I murmured without looking at her. “He’s made it clear he doesn’t want me anywhere near him.”

“Pair of moody pricks. Honestly it’s just my luck that it would be _me_ who has to explain this to you,” she scoffed. “So tell me, Potter, what exactly do _you_ think is going on here?”

“No fucking idea,” I sighed. “Look, I can’t do this right now, Parkinson.” I could feel a lump in my throat and I wasn’t sure I was strong enough to let this particular dam burst in front of another human being yet.

“Fine. I’ll talk. You listen. First of all, if you two think I don’t know you were fucking, you’re wrong. Oh, for Merlin’s sake, Potter, there’s no need to sit there catching flies,” she quickly added as I gaped at her, “neither of you has any talent for subtlety. You know how I knew? He was _happy_. That and he couldn’t keep his eyes off you, of course. It was really quite sweet in a slightly nauseating kind of way. He’s not as sneaky as he thinks he is, wandering around all lovestruck. And don’t look so pleased with yourself, Potter - _you’re_ as bad,” she snapped as I tried to wipe the goofy grin from my face. “We _all_ had an inkling, you know. You know you might as well be walking around with it written on a flashing sign when even _Neville_ knows something’s up. Anyway then that day in Hogsmeade happened and suddenly he’s a complete pain in my arse again, all drawn and angsty, _you_ look like you’re on the verge of tears all the damn time and you could cut the atmosphere with a knife. Honestly, I haven’t seen him this bad since . . .” she blanched and seemed to catch herself. “I haven’t seen him this bad _in a long time_. Draco . . . Draco _feels_ really deeply. People don’t get it because he puts out something really different to people he doesn’t trust; and that’s _most_ people, let’s face it. He _loves_ like this. He’s passionate and angry when he gives a shit about things, and you need to understand that he gives a massive shit about you. It’s so important you don’t hurt him. I’m not sure he’d survive it. Don’t break his heart. And this isn’t me making a lame attempt to threaten you . . .”

“I know.”

“I’m asking you not to break his heart because I care about him. And because he’s become a good man and he doesn’t deserve it.”

“I _know_ , Pansy. Merlin, I really do fucking love him. _All_ of him. But that’s irrelevant because he doesn’t want me.”

“Oh, for fuck’s sake. You really are as bad as each other. And as for that little git Wright, if he hadn’t . . . look, ask him to look you in the eye and say he doesn’t love you. That’ll be how you’ll know I’m right about this. Because I know Draco and he won’t be able to do it. He’ll be able to bluff and bluster his way through everything else, but not that. He’s keeping this distance from you because he thinks that’s the only way he can keep you safe. The thing with Wright, he could have shouldered whatever he threw at him, but not him attacking you the way he did. I think you know that, deep down. I think you know I’m right about this. It took someone giving _you_ the hate that was meant for him to make him walk away, didn’t it?”

I nodded. “I love him so much, Pansy. This is killing me. Not being with him hurts like fuck but he asked me to stay away from him and I promised I would if it was what he wanted.”

We both glanced across the room as he got up and made for the dormitory.

“It isn’t what he wants. Potter . . . _Harry_ , look at me,” I looked up into delicate, feline eyes, shocked to see them full of tears. “It _isn’t_ what he wants. This is Draco thinking he’s keeping you from being hurt, because he doesn’t see how it can _be,_ you and him . . . he doesn’t believe he deserves how happy he was. But it’s breaking him because he _needs_ you. So do me a favour, Saviour. If you’re sure about how you feel - and it’s really important you _are_ sure - go and put him out of his misery. It’s not the rest of the world he needs saving from, it’s his stubborn self,” she shot another fleeting look towards the stairs Draco had just climbed that led to our dormitory.

“What, _now_?!” I asked jumpily.

“No, next fucking Tuesday. Of course _now_. Men, honestly . . .” she rolled her eyes, throwing her nose into the air haughtily as she walked away.

“Thanks, Parkinson,” I called after her, “you’re, you’re a  . . . “

“Yeah, yeah,” she called back, waving dismissively.

 

\- - - - - - -

“Hey,” I said hesitantly, closing the door of the dormitory behind me.

“Why are you here, Potter? I take it I have Pansy to thank? You two seemed to be getting pretty close when I left.” He was sitting on his bed with his back to me, his head in his hands.

“She’s worried about you. And I know, I know you said you wanted me to leave you alone and I said I would and I know I’m breaking my promise but . . . Draco . . .” I saw him flinch as I said his name.

“What, Potter? What is it?!”

“I need to talk to you. I’m . . . I . . . fuck, I’m so worried about you. I feel . . .”

He stood up and spun around on his heel to face me. Pansy had been right about him looking drawn. I’d noticed it, of course, but here, close up, he looked so sad I felt like crying.

“You’re the smuggest prick on earth, aren’t you, Potter? Well, save your breath. I don’t need your messiah complex and I don’t need your pity. I don’t . . . I don’t need _you_.”

I felt like I’d been slapped. “OK, fine,” I said, my voice breaking, my hands balled into fists. “But what about what _I_ need? I don’t pity you, you conceited arse. Surprising as it may seem I don’t think you need pity. You made your choices and they were the wrong ones. But I understand why. I understand _you_.”

“Like fuck you do.”

“You know I do, Draco. You’re angry and you get lonely. You’re fiercely intelligent, even though you’re a boastful shit you still understate your intelligence to help you keep your head down. Keeps you safe, doesn’t it? Most of the time, at least. You adore your mother, you worship her. You are unbelievably brave, and big-hearted, even if you’re not affectionate. With most people, anyway. You only ever allow yourself two cups of coffee a day, never after lunchtime, always black. Since everything was over you get to be you, _for_ you, and you don’t know what to do with it. And you’ve chosen to believe that things can be better. You’ve made terrible choices but you’ve made truly wonderful ones too. You could have chosen an easier road for yourself after the war but you came back. You came back to the world.”

“Nice speech. Finished? You can never walk away, can you?” He turned his back to me. “I fucking hate you,” he said weakly.

“Do you? Well here’s the thing. _I love you_. So tell me, hating me, does it hurt as much as loving you hurts me? What does it feel like, Malfoy? Describe it to me. Make it hurt me the way it hurts you. Show me how to hate you.”

He turned back to me, his face contorted with rage.

“You’re never happy till you’ve got one over on me, are you?!” he practically screamed. “Never happy till everyone’s saved and you’ve won. That day, in Hogsmeade, you couldn’t just walk away. You have to see me weak, you fucking love the idea of me needing you. You won’t be happy till I’m finished. Destroyed.”

“If I’d wanted you destroyed I could have left you to that Fiendfyre.”

“Maybe you should have. What is it, Potter? Finally realising you might have got it wrong? That you fucked up when you saved a monster like me?”

“You’re not a monster.”

“You haven’t got a single fucking clue.”

“I know you don’t know what to do with your feelings. About yourself. About _me_.”

He made to move things on his desk distractedly, breaking our gaze. “I told you. I hate you,” he whispered.

“Yeah. So you keep saying. You’re so obsessed with me saving you that you haven’t stopped to consider. To realise that maybe now _I need you to save me_.”

“I can’t save anyone. I can’t even save myself,” he growled, his shoulders slumping.

I moved up behind him, spinning him back around to face me.

“You hate me?” I asked him, looking into his eyes.

He closed them. “Yes. I hate you.”

“Stop looking away. Look into my eyes and say it. Say you hate me. Tell me . . . tell me you don’t love me.”

He shook his head.

“You won’t do it, will you?” I asked, our faces so close we were breathing the same air.

The moment I kissed him felt like getting back my whole world. Realising he was kissing me back was almost too much to process. I kissed like a starving man down his pale jawline, to his throat, his neck.

He let out a quiet, heaving sob. “I don’t hate you. I don’t hate you. I don’t want . . . _them_ to hate you. They’ll hate you for me.”

“It’s OK. It’s OK. I love you. You are alive and full and here and I love you.”

“You can’t save me, Harry.”

“You haven’t been listening. What about if I need you to save me, Draco? What if I need you with me, to stop pushing me away? Do you think you’re the only one who’s scared of feeling this way? Of giving this kind of power over themselves to another person? The only thing that scares me more than that is how the last few weeks, _months_ without you have made me feel. I know some ministry bastard was trying to get kicks out of putting us together here this year. But the joke’s on them because you’re the best thing about my life right now. You’ve always mattered to me. Always. It’s been killing me to see you so unhappy. You really do believe it don’t you? That you can’t be loved. That you don’t deserve it. You just can’t . . . you’re beautiful. You’re beautiful, Draco. And I love you. I’ve fallen in love with you and I’m scared just like you but I love you.”

He looked at me, wide-eyed, shaking his head as if to clear it of a disturbing vision, arranging his features into an attempt at a cold sneer and walking backwards away from me.

“You’re mixing up your feelings. It’s just sex. That’s all. You don’t have to start playing the balcony scene just because we fucked a few times, Potter.”

“You really are an arrogant prick aren’t you? Here’s the thing. _You’re not that hot._ If I want dirty, easy sex I can find it somewhere else - as you insist on pointing out at every opportunity, I’m The Chosen One. You think I’m saying all of this just because I’m so desperate for you to keep pounding me every night? What I want is you. And that isn’t easy in any way. You’re closed off and stubborn and you can be distant and defensive but I love you and that’s what makes being with you what I want. So get over yourself and accept that for once something isn’t about your fantastic arse.”

Something flashed across his face. It took me a moment to realise that he was smiling. A real smile, a smile that brightened his grey eyes as he stepped slowly towards me. “I think it’s a bit about my arse.”

I bit my lip to keep from grinning. “The fact that you have the best arse in the world is entirely circumstantial, Draco. I love you. Perfect bastard. This was never just fucking. Not for me. I don’t think it was ever just fucking for you, either.”

“I . . .” he started, tears falling steadily down his face. “I lo- . . . I . . . I am absolutely, ridiculously in love with you. I don’t deserve you. I don’t deserve how you make me feel. But you want the truth? There it is. I love you. I love you, Harry.”

“Kiss me again.”

“That’s such a bad idea. I’ll kiss you and I won’t want to stop. I won’t want to let you go.”

“That had better be a promise, Draco Malfoy.”

I felt like my veins had turned to fire when his probing tongue slipped into my mouth. “Can you feel that?” I asked him, pulling back just far enough to speak. “Can you feel how much I love you? How much I need you?”

“I’ve missed you so much,” he sniffed, rubbing his nose into the crook of my neck.

It took us nearly an hour just to get undressed, to find ourselves laying next to each other on his bed. I hadn’t realised how much I loved slowly revealing his skin that way until that night had come when I thought I’d never get to do it again. 

“You’ll need to go slowly. It’s been a while, after all,” I said, stroking his hardness, pushing him onto his back so that I could open my throat to him, taking as much of him as I could until he cried out for me. “Not just the spells. Your fingers. It’s _you_ I need. Just you.”

He spent long minutes opening me up, fucking me with a finger, then two, then three before lifting me to straddle him.

He palmed at his cock. “You want this?” he asked, wiggling his eyebrows at me.

I positioned myself over him and sat slowly, taking every inch of him, feeling the delicious stretch and revelling in the sound of his breath catching as my body opened up to him. “Like you wouldn’t believe,” I answered pleadingly.

He entwined our fingers, our hands clasped together as I moved, his cock pressing against every nerve inside me, his gaze never leaving mine as I impaled myself on him again and again.

“I love you,” he whimpered. He kept saying those three words, again and again, so quietly that after a while he was mouthing them to me, a form of magic all its own.

“I need you. I need this. I need you with me,” I said as I pumped my cock in time with my rocking, my climax building in the core of my body. “Oh, I’m coming, I’m gonna, oh fuck I’m gonna come . . .” I cried out as he lifted my free hand and placed it over his chest. My come hit his stomach, coating our hands, still clasped together over his thumping heart.

I grunted contentedly as he flipped me onto my back, sinking a few thrusts into my body before coming inside me with a roar that would leave anyone in the rooms nearby in no doubt about what we were doing.

“Never thought I could miss anyone as much as I’ve missed you,” he panted against my chest before rolling backwards, pulling me with him so that I rested on his shoulder. He reached for his wand and cast a cleansing charm lazily before moving to rest his head against my stomach.

I stroked his hair protectively. “Love watching you come,” I said, catching my breath.

“You look so hot like that, riding me, looking down at me like we’re the only two people in the world. Fuck, that was good,” he chuckled.

“When did you first start to . . . to think of me, you know, like that?” I asked after a while.

“It was that night, y’know, the firewhisky? I felt something that night, wasn’t sure what it was at the time. You looked like you were in pain and it made me angry. You’re not meant to be in pain. Not you,” he said, determined. “I don’t know how you can say you feel this way. After everything I’ve done, everything I was, the kid I was.”

“I remember watching you drink from that bottle and thinking you were absolutely fucking gorgeous. You’re still you, you know,” I said with a wry smile. “You know, still a total smart-arse git. But your edges aren’t so sharp anymore. I thought it was because you were unhappy but now I think it’s just I’ve seen who you really are. The other guy, the sharp guy, _he’s_ the act. I love that I . . . I feel safe when I’m with you. Calm. That’s weird, isn’t it? Given our . . . history? You let me be quiet and still. You just . . .  let me _be_.”

He laughed at that. “Ah yes, Harry Potter and his surprisingly noisy silences. I remember I couldn’t stop smiling that night. Sitting there with you on that dusty floor was making me _smile_. I didn’t know what had got into me. Should’ve known then that I was fucked. Then all that stuff about my mother, it all just came bubbling out of me. I didn’t know why I was telling you it all. Only that it felt right. It all made sense when I kissed you. As soon as I kissed you I knew what I’d been feeling. Then afterwards, after we’d . . . you actually _stayed_ with me. You weren’t disgusted or angry with me.”

“I thought you didn’t _want_ me to stay. You practically threw me out of your bed after you’d had your way with me that first time!”

He blushed. “I wanted you to. I just didn’t want to say it out loud,” he said shyly. “Pot-, um, _Harry_?”

“Yeah?”

“Will you . . . you don’t have to, I don’t mind, but . . . will you meet my mother? I mean, not immediately, if you don’t want.”

“I’ve met her,” I said with fake innocence, teasing.

“You know what I mean, Potter. I was thinking maybe . . . Christmas together. If you want to. If you’re free . . .”

I lifted his chin so that he was looking up at me.

“I’ll be where you are, OK? If that’s with Narcissa, I’m there.”

His eyes filled with tears as he nodded and looked away. 

“How do you think she’ll take it?”

“You make me happier than I’ve ever been. Happier than I thought I could be, than I deserved. She’ll be delighted. I mean, she’ll be awkward as hell and probably a bit embarrassing but she’ll be delighted.”

“Well, since I spent last Christmas fucking her son I suppose that this is the least I can do.”

“Hmm. Maybe don’t put it quite like that when you meet her. How do you think everyone else will react? What happens when people turn on you?”

“Then I come to you and you hold me like you’re holding me now and it’s OK because we’re together. It will never matter as long as you’re with me. Please stay with me. Don’t leave me.” I pulled him up so that our faces touched, kissing him chastely. When I sprawled across his body I rested my lips against the black mark on his arm, my fingers tracing the raised scar flesh of the Sectumsempra curse. Marks of his battles, marks of abuses, some marks I gave him myself. “I promise you, because I love you so much, no one will ever mark you again,” I said, every word earnest and as clear as a bell.

He gasped when I kissed the Dark Mark. “You can’t promise that.”

“Yes I can. I can promise to be strong for you.”

“I think you’ll mark me all my life. I hope you will. I want you to mark me, to remind me how loved I can feel.” His eyes fell closed and I thought of that first time I lay awake watching him breathing and dreaming. 

“You are loved. I’ll be right here when you wake up,” I soothed, surrendering to my own drowsiness, folding myself into his arms.


	6. Epilogue

It hadn’t occurred to me that that Christmas would be spent in our own home. 

I’d been prepared to go to Malfoy Manor if I had to, in spite of what it could be allowed to represent for me if I stopped long enough to let it. Draco worried about it endlessly until he wasn’t sleeping and I said enough was enough, that there was an obvious solution - a flat, our own flat together.

Part of the problem was that everywhere had its memories and its symbols for us now. Malfoy Manor wasn’t the seat of anyone’s happiness - we were both pretty baffled that Narcissa still stayed there - and Grimmauld Place made me think too much, which made me short-tempered and miserable. The house in Godric’s Hollow would be beautiful one day, but I still wasn’t sure how I felt about it yet.

By the end of summer I knew what we needed. We needed something that wasn’t mine, or his, but _ours_. I had thought he would need time to think about such a big step. He said yes straight away.

And so there we were, Narcissa and Draco and me, enjoying Christmas together, the whole occasion not nearly as awkward as he and I had thought it would be. She had taken the news well. Like most of our friends, she made a real effort to appear surprised, but it was unconvincing. It seemed that Pansy had been right - we’d really only ever been fooling ourselves. 

Narcissa had some colour to her, too, and even laughed a few times. The joy of seeing him so happy as he watched her made me feel like I would burst. I knew I would never lay eyes on anything as dazzling as a rare, genuine, eye-brightening smile from Draco Malfoy.

“Thank you for trying so hard not to laugh at the baby pictures,” he grumbled at me as we lay in bed together later that night. 

“I still can’t believe how cute . . .”

“Stop! Stop it, stop right there, I will _not_ be drawn into any more conversations about how cute I was as a baby, it was quite mortifying enough the first ten times, thank you.”

“She loves you very much,” I said. 

I must have sounded somber; he turned to me with a frown. “I love her very much, too. And I know how lucky I am. I know . . . I know you never got that with your parents.”

“I didn’t mean anything by it. It was just an observation. And I don’t resent you your memories. I know they weren’t _all_ happy, and besides, I don’t doubt my parents loved me. Should we have been more insistent about her staying over tonight, do you think? I wished she would but . . .”

“No, trust me on this. Mother needs to be alone sometimes. She always found company difficult and that’s even more true now. I’ll check on her in the morning and she can get hold of us immediately if she needs to. I don’t think crowding her is going to help her,” he mumbled, pulling me in to kiss me, holding my lower lip gently between his teeth.

“You’re so like her, you know. All bright and elegant. No wonder she’s so proud of you.”

“Harry?”

“Yeah?”

“I need you to stop talking about my mother now.”

“Why?”

“Because I’m going to fuck you. I’m going to fuck you until you can’t form words. I’m going to fuck you until you beg me to come deep inside you. And that all requires your undivided attention.”

“Fuck, Draco,” I whined as he ran the tip of his tongue over my throat.

“Yes. Fuck Draco. That’s the idea.”

He laid me on my back and touched me infuriatingly slowly, thrusting and stroking and kissing my orgasm out of me before his back arched and he filled me the way we both loved so much.

We lay there afterwards, legs entwined. I looked up at his face to see him nibbling on his thumbnail.

“What’s wrong?” I asked.

“Will you marry me, Harry?” he asked abruptly.

“Wh- _what_?!”

“I won’t mind if you say no. Well, I _will_ mind, but you know what I mean. I can wait. I can wait forever if you need me to, as long as you’re happy. But I know everything I need to know to know I want to marry you. So I’d like to know if you’ll marry me.”

I was quietly grateful I was already laying down, because there was no way my knees wouldn’t have given out from under me. “Yeah. Yeah I bloody will actually,” I answered, stunned.

“I know it’s soon. We’re young,” he said, as if he was still trying to convince me.

“Don’t care about any of that,” I shrugged.

“No, me neither.”

“I did genuinely think I’d be the one to ask you, though,” I said, tracing his jawline with my fingertip.

He smiled. “Go on and ask me then.”

“Will you marry me, Draco?”

He sighed. “I suppose so, yes.”

I elbowed him playfully before he grabbed my wrists and pinned me to the mattress. “Merlin, I fucking love you,” he breathed, grinding his erection into my hip.

“Seriously? _Again_?!”

“Come on, Potter. You know twice in one night Is nowhere near our personal best,” he grinned, kissing his way down my chest, to my stomach . . .

“You are absolutely insatia- _OH fuck_!” I cried as he began to lap obscenely loudly and wetly at my cock, and I briefly thought that, in the end, it was probably just as well Narcissa had decided against spending the night.


End file.
